Peter Temple - White Dog

Sarah threw her cigarette into the fire. ‘Anyway,’ she said, she sounded as if she wanted to end the story, ‘I was just a silly kid trying to pass myself off as street smart. I’d only had sex once before that night. I should still have been at school.’

‘What?’ I said.

Something between smiling and showing pain, dentists would know the facial movement.

‘They raped me,’ she said. ‘It went on and on and when I thought it was over, I was lying there, Gary Webber came in. He was totally bombed and he wanted his turn. I tried to fight him and he punched me in the chest a few times, hard, in my stomach too, he was dancing around like a boxer, he had his hands up, and then he was going to hit me in the face. I was against this counter thing and he took a step back, ready to hit me. There was a full wine bottle and I got my hands on it and I hit him first. I kept hitting him with it until it broke.’

Her voice, the small sag of her shoulders, touched me. I believed her and I felt an urge to put out a hand and say that. Instead I said, ‘I understood that you claimed to have no memory of what happened. Is this the newly recovered version?’

She looked at me, not the child eyes I’d seen at our first meeting: sad, grown-up. She put her glass on the mantelpiece.

‘Goodnight, Mr Irish,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the beer.’

She walked for the door. I said nothing, felt a clenched fist in my stomach. This had been a bad idea, I had made it worse.

The door was difficult to open from the inside, there was play in the doorknob, the small screws worked themselves loose, they needed tightening from time to time. She twisted the knob, and, without turning her head, anxiety in her voice, said, ‘Can you let me out?’

I crossed the room, reached around her, put my hand on the doorknob, pushed, turned, the tongue moved enough. I pulled the door open a crack.

‘I keep meaning to fix the damn thing,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you down the stairs.’

She was still, we were close, I could feel the electricity in her. She pushed the door closed, spoke without turning.

‘I wanted to die after that night,’ she said, voice thin. ‘Three men treated me like a toy. They did anything they wanted to. Then I almost killed someone. I would have killed him, I didn’t care. So if I’d been offered surgery to take that night out of my brain, I would have said yes, yes, yes. Yes, please.’

Her forehead was against the door. I was looking at the nape of her neck, the clean dark hairs in the soft and pale hollow.

‘I couldn’t speak about what had happened,’ she said. ‘Not to anyone. I didn’t have the words for it. So if I said I didn’t remember, then I didn’t have to speak about it.’

A silence, the crackling of the fire, the wash of rain on the roof, the swallowings in the downpipes.

‘I was just a young girl,’ she said. ‘Can you understand, Jack?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and I did touch her. I reached out and put my right hand on her shoulder.

Sarah turned and looked up at me, a sheen on her eyes. I took my hand away but I could not take back the touch. She moved closer and I drew her to me, no urgency in the embrace, just the desire to touch.

But she raised her face and we kissed. It was just a gentle pressure of lips, I tasted beer and nicotine and salt, and I knew that could not be the end of it. I put a hand on her neck, felt the taut muscles, she put both hands behind my head, pulled me with strong hands, strong arms, our lips opened.

There was a moment when we came apart and I said, gruffly, ‘Sarah, I don’t think…’

‘Think,’ she said, as throaty, ‘Don’t think. I want to lie down. Is that possible?’

‘Possible?’ I said. ‘It’s probably compulsory.’

I rose in the dark, pulled on the ancient garments and set out on my route. Punishment for the body in a cold, moist dawn. I ran over surfaces glistening, slippery, treacherous for ankles. In the parade, I saw the night’s sad survivors limping towards home. I saw the pioneers of the opening day, going to some dull task with narrow eyes and thin lips.

As I shambled along, I thought about sex and remorse. I always felt regret after the first sex with anyone. Something in my history triggered a feeling of wrongdoing. Enthusiastic consent wasn’t ever enough for me to look back with pleasure. I shook my head, ran the moisture off my hair with a hand. Never mind the past, this time I had other good reasons for feeling guilty. Linda had been gone not much more than a week. Sarah was almost a client, she had been in an emotional state. There could be no excuse for having sex with her.

‘Listen, Jack,’ she’d said, standing at her car in the small hours, not the old ute, a VW, ‘I was going to make a pass the first chance I got. But I didn’t mean it to be teary. I’m sorry about that.’

She took a fistful of my old T-shirt, pulled me close and we kissed goodbye, not a short kiss. I went back to bed, tingling, her scent on the pillows, dropped in and out of sleep.

I turned right off Brunswick Street to run through the gardens, the tree trunks black, still holding the night, the lamps of the park making rough wickerwork of the bare lower branches. Just ahead was the place where a man had tried to shoot me. For months afterwards, I avoided coming this way, and then one morning, running on automatic, mind on something, I found myself approaching the near-fatal spot. The taboo was broken, it never bothered me again.

Sarah couldn’t exonerate me by saying she was primed for action. She would say whatever was needed to prevent the thought entering her mind that she had been a victim again.

But she was not my client. I was just a researcher. Doing the academic work, the oral history. Vansina, was that his name? The oral historian. Vansina. Could be a soccer player. Did they still call themselves oral historians? It could mislead.

Nonsense. I was trying to save Sarah from going to prison for murder. Drew and I stood between her and the years of nothing, the evening meal at 5 pm. She knew that, she knew how important I was to her future.

That was why it was my duty to avoid personal involvement.

Still, as personal involvement went, it had been intensely pleasurable. She was strong and erotic. Also clever and funny and self-mocking afterwards, easy to be with.

Ah, lust. Guilty of lust, it had ever been so. Lust had often overruled what passed for my common sense, my principles. And would again, given the chance.

I looked across at the tennis courts that had been the scene of the Greer-Irish marathon. No more could I play Drew Greer at tennis for three hours. Play and lose to him. He never spoke of that late summer afternoon that became a summer evening. I didn’t speak of it either but the loss still rankled with me. I should have won, I was cruising to victory and then I let him back in and my nerve went.

To win and not to gloat. Drew was good at that. Still, he’d had a lot more experience of winning. Had a lot more backbone too. Backbone. I hated the expression, my grandfather used it, he was a backbone expert, X-ray eyes for backbone, could spot backbone in toddlers. I hated it yet I thought it.

Home in sight, feeling weak in character, in body, in mind, my legs full of lead sinkers.

I had a long shower, thinking about whether to tell Drew. Of course I should, he was entitled to know. Why? It was a private matter, it wouldn’t change anything. Indeed, it was better that he didn’t know. She was his client, nothing should cloud his judgment. The prosecution could at any time offer a deal and he would have to put it to her, offer advice. Cop manslaughter, you’ll get the minimum, that’s the best we can hope for. I don’t think we want to fall for this, they know how shaky their case is, we’ve got an excellent chance of an acquittal.